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Google Patents Staple of '70s Mainframe Computing
theodp writes "'The lack of interest, the disdain for history is what makes computing not-quite-a-field,' Alan Kay once lamented. And so it should come as no surprise that the USPTO granted Google a patent Tuesday for the Automatic Deletion of Temporary Files, perhaps unaware that the search giant's claimed invention is essentially a somewhat kludgy variation on file expiration processing, a staple of circa-1970 IBM mainframe computing and subsequent disk management software. From Google's 2013 patent: 'A path name for a file system directory can be "C:temp\12-1-1999\" to indicate that files contained within the file system directory will expire on Dec. 1, 1999.' From Judith Rattenbury's 1971 Introduction to the IBM 360 computer and OS/JCL: 'EXPDT=70365 With this expiration date specified, the data set will not be scratched or overwritten without special operator action until the 365th day of 1970.' Hey, things are new if you've never seen them before!"
This is supposed to be new...
Google Labs is supposedly working on a next-gen programming development environment that allows source code statements to be physically manipulated like a deck of cards.
Cut the foreign born crap (Aussie here). Just say they are incompetent and leave it at that. Its more accurate that way.
It's not like Microsoft was ever going to be interested in that anyway. They must get cents back from the disk manufacturers for perpetuating their ever-growing temp folders.
I don't know whats worse, Google applied for this, or the USPTO approved it.
If you actually read the patent, it is specifically for a similar method, but designed for Distributed File Systems. This is different from just a single file being names a certain way. It is an algorithm based on the location of other related files, each different file's modified and Time to Live (TTL) dates, and the factors determined by the, keywords here, plurality of servers. If they tried to patent a regular temporary file that would be different, but this is a distributed system specifically for a file that is distributed in different parts on different systems. If you still think this has been done before, I would love to see the source for that information and gladly would recant myself given that.
The man who cannot imagine a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot - Andre Breton
The same thing happened in the 80s and early 90s when microcomputers started gaining features like virtual memory, protected modes, out of order execution, etc... People thought these were all brand new things, when in fact mainframe processors had done all that 20 years prior in the 1960s.
I bet when all the kids were super-excited about programming on the i386 with its "OMG VIRTUAL MEMORY!!!" the older guys who had worked on mainframes just rolled their eyes. :)
Read about the IBM 360/91 if you want details on what I mean. It was amazing when you consider the year it came out.
The summary is wrong. Folks, please stop reading the abstract, and read claim 1 instead.
This is what is patented:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: selecting a file having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers, wherein each chunk has a modification time indicating when the chunk was last modified, and wherein at least two of the modification times are different; identifying a user profile associated with the file; determining a memory space storage quota usage for the user profile; deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks; determining that an elapsed time based on the latest modification time is equal to or exceeds the weighted file time to live; and deleting all of the chunks of the file responsive to the determining.
I think it's time for a crowdsourced patent challenge web site run by the USPTO where there would be a period of public comment for each patent about to be awarded in order to help underpaid (and I imagine under-resourced) examiners find Prior Art.
A lot fewer patents might be awarded, but ones that are would be genuinely new -- this might also save the world billions of dollars.
And the inventive step is....
And the non obvious part is....
The problem here isn't the USPTO, it's the Patent Appeals Court that modified the Supreme Court decision (that an invention needed to be more than the sum of its parts), and decided that as soon as you'd been told about an invention, your judgement would be tainted by 'hindsight bias' and thus unable to determine prior art. So unless it's written down in that form, the patent should be awarded.
Can I ask the idiots in the Patent Appeals Court, is THIS invention more than the sum of its parts?
No?!
Did you also inspect the quota for the user owning the file to determine if you should delete it? Were the files also stored in a distributed file system, with chunks of the file on separate systems?
Every single claim in that patent mention both of those things.
The naming of files is an example of a part of a claim. To infringe on a patent you need to infringe on at least one entire claim.
Miniaturization took care of that.
Whether or not it could be done for some arbitrary price is not relevant.
Doing something over again in a different medium is still not invention no matter how much you want to shill for companies that would grind you into crackers if given enough motive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
geez, when is slashdot ever gonna stop running these stupid articles that only show how little the posters know about patent law
or, at least, READ THE FILE WRAPPER 111
MAYBE THE IBM PATENT IS AN X OR Y DOC IN THE SEARCH REPORT 111
OR THE VERY LEAST, READ THE CLAIMS !!!
claim 1:
A computer-implemented method comprising: selecting a file having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers, wherein each chunk has a modification time indicating when the chunk was last modified, and wherein at least two of the modification times are different; identifying a user profile associated with the file; determining a memory space storage quota usage for the user profile; deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks; determining that an elapsed time based on the latest modification time is equal to or exceeds the weighted file time to live; and deleting all of the chunks of the file responsive to the determining
to be covered by claim one, you must meet each AND every part..
did IBM, back in 1970s , describe a file divided among two or more (= plurality) servers, where at least two of the parts has a diff modification time, and dong the storage quote athing ??
patents are specific; i leave it to the experts to say if this one is worth anything
In order for your statement to be true - EVERY single bit of the description below would have to be included in that 70's mainframe you are talking about
In order for your statement to be true, the Doctrine of Equivalents would have to be eliminated.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Oh sorry I didn't realise everyone had a 70s mainframe back then. My mistake.
Heck did you know those mainframes had that feature? I didn't.
What I meant is that I don't see how the fact that the temp. files being deleted are on a distributed file system is relevant to the concept of cleaning them up?
find /tmp/* -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
As someone who works with Indian engineers daily, who lives with (and is about to marry) a Chinese engineer, and who is himself "foreign born"... You are so full of racist crap, I'd be afraid to kick you out my door for fear of ruining the carpet.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
But the USPTO is populated by idiots.
They are deserving of the disdain and ridicule reserved for the Postal Office, Congress, etc.
Which is a shame because I've always figured they had some pretty smart people there. The examiner should have taken a shit on the application and mailed it back with a note saying,"this is what your application is worth".
They are either complete morons or...are getting payoffs. And Google will just use it as club some day on a small outfit that doesn't have half a million dollars to fight a lawsuit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I used to service Icon II's which used a primitive form of QNX. When the hard drive filled up, it would start deleting old files. In a school, the oldest unmodified file was usually the master password file. Since these systems didn't have a built in root login, this means they were self bricking.
this prior art should not matter, the patent should have been denied on the grounds that it is bloody obvious, that is a reason for rejecting them is it not?
It's just another version of a dog licence intended as a petty revenue stream. When a patent is granted that's proof of nothing other than the government is aware of it and has it on file - validity these days is apparently supposed to be sorted out in court and is none of the patent office's business.
Someone once said, most patent applications are a result of a lack of good literature/patent research.
Ahh, those halcyon days of youth on VAX/VMS turning in Assignment4.c;97
Those were the good old days.
And the worms ate into his brain.
I believe that In the 1960's Burroughs Corporation used a zero date for temporary files on their B-5500 systems running CANDE.
What I meant is that I don't see how the fact that the temp. files being deleted are on a distributed file system is relevant to the concept of cleaning them up?
It's because there's no concept of the inode where I can go and see a single timestamp for the age of the file. Instead I have a timestamp on each of the chunks which make up the file. This adds the following to claim one
Which legally, according to East Texas and the Federal circuit, but probably not according to the more recent decisions of the supreme court of the USA, is sufficient to make this patentable material. Note that it doesn't tell you some magic new fast algorithm for doing this. There is nothing valuable in this patent. However, if Google didn't patent it Microsoft would and would then sue them in East Texas and have the court ignore the fact that Google had published it as prior art. They have little choice but to do stupid patents as long as the stupidity of software patents continues.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Sshhh don't tell him but third world South Africa was running it's social welfare program with a database on a mainframe back in the 1960s. Punch-cards and all.
I actually met the guy who was the chief operator/programmer on it once (in the late 90's), he declared in conversation that "I wrote code to manage a database of millions of entries on a computer with 64Kb of RAM that filled an entire floor in our building. The commodore 64 had the same memory and three times the CPU power in 1980 and you could carry it in a briefcase. That was good, the downside is: programmers nowadays don't know how to write efficient software anymore".
Many of the great computer companies of the past were NOT American, and even the ones that were exported widely. I had a comodore 64 in the early 1980's and I used it's manual to learn to program a few years later using Microsoft BASIC on a 286. A few years after that I was learning Turbo Pascal - and this was all before I went to high-school.
We in the rest of the world did in fact have access to many of the same technologies the US did, and when we did not - we generally DID know about it, and of course South Africa was probably the LEAST exposed to such technologies because until 1989 we were under export sanctions so companies in the US weren't ALLOWED to sell us stuff.
Not that this stopped most of them - all they did was create a wholy-owned company registered INSIDE South Africa that manufactured the goods locally. If anything sanctions created a great deal of employment for South Africans and actually postponed the end of apartheid. It had some weird consequences too: Pepsi refused to use the loophole (claiming they supported the anti-appartheid movement), Coca-Cola had no such qualms and built a bottling plant in South Africa. As a result: to this day, Coca-Cola remains the preferred soft drink here (even among black people) and pepsi hardly sells in the few stores that bother to stock it at all because two generations of South Africans grew up in a world where Pepsi didn't exist but Coca-Cola did.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
...is done by folks who have the technical knowledge (and people skills) of Tijuana pole dancers.
Tech companies know this, and have basically been daring each other to attempt patenting more and more outrageous things.
Sadly, with great success.
It's amazing what walking into a bar with lots of dollar bills will get you...
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
The "summary" wholly misrepresents what the patent is about. It's not about having an expiration date in the filename at all. When someone advocating a position lies to me, as this submitter did, I figure the reason they are lying about the issue is because they realize that the truth doesn't support their position.
Rather than choosing an expiration date ahead of time, the patented method deletes a file (or not) based on multiplying the time to live by the inverse of the user's quota usage, plus the latest of several modification times. The patent covers only using that specific algorithm, and only when the TTL is represented within the filename.
Is that algorithm obvious? Several Slashdot commentors who say the are programmers read the explanation of the algorithm and still didn't understand it at all. One might say that if it's explained to you and you don't "get it", it's probably not obvious.